Ain't Gonna Drown
by secretmonkey
Summary: Set after S2 finale, while Clarke is wandering. She doesn't know what she's doing or where she's going and it's starting to wear on her. And when Monty and a Grounder assassin show up, things go from bad to worse. Warning for some self-harm.
1. A Start

_**A/N: Warning for some self-harm**_

Clarke starts with the soles of her feet.

It's not by choice. It's not like she wakes up and thinks that bleeding herself, that slowly working her way to the death by a thousand cuts is a good idea and she should totally start with her feet, with the soles, the tender delicate flesh that you never think of. It is _that_ , she knows. The soles are the souls and without them you're stuck, motionless, going nowhere fast and nowhere slow.

And not going _isn't_ the same as not staying because staying is a choice, even if it isn't the one she made.

The first one, the first cut, is an accident. She's just finished washing off in a stream, washing as best she can. It's taken less than a week of walking for the dirt.. The _Earth…_ to rise up around her and cover her. It rains the fourth night and her shelter, such as it was kept her dry but the mud oozed in over night and now it's all become something of a second skin, a layer of hardened dust and dirt and whatever. Sometimes she thinks about letting it go, about letting it just sink and soak into her, burying her even as she walks.

Sometimes. But not always because those are the thoughts of someone who wants to die and that's not Clarke. Not yet. She doesn't have the first inkling of how to live anymore but that doesn't mean she wants to stop doing it. So she keeps walking and she keeps washing and she keeps hoping that one or the other will fix whatever is broken or at least show her how before…

She just keeps walking.

Sometimes she thinks about the dirt and sometime she thinks about her friends, her mother, her people. Sometimes she thinks about which way she's going and what she might find. A trading outpost or a Grounder village.

Polis is out there. Somewhere. And sometimes she thinks of it and that makes her think of Lexa and then she doesn't think of that anymore.

Sometimes, when it's night or in the early light of day or when it rains or when the sun beats down on her so savagely she's grateful for that extra layer of skin, sometimes she thinks of… other…things… things she knows she's better off not thinking of which, she supposes is _exactly_ why she does.

She thinks of dying gasps she never heard. Of friends who will never look at her again because all they'll see in her eyes and her face and the haunted empty of her smile is _them_. The dead family. Dead friends. Those she couldn't save and those she killed in the trying. Dead friends and dead families and dead children and sometimes Clarke thinks of walking back to Mount Weather and sitting on level five and never moving again because somehow looking at the dead might hurt less than not looking at the living.

So she walks and she thinks until she can't and then she washes to try and remind herself she's human - of one kind or another - and that's what it happens, the first one. As she's climbing out of the stream, in that moment - the only one she has - when she feels new and alive and forgets for just a moment why she's out here.

She figures, later, that's why it happened _then_. That's why the Earth, so much of it scorched by her and _hers_ , reached up and reminded her.

Or maybe, she thinks, that's just what she wants it to mean.

The stream bed is rocks and most of them are big. Big enough and smooth enough in spots that she can step on them, climb them, navigate her way back to solid dry ground. _Most_ of them are like that but not all and it's not one of the big ones that does it. It's a small one. A jagged little number hidden between, jutting out of a crack, the tip of it covered in just enough moss to blend in, so she doesn't see it until it slices through her skin.

It's not a bad cut, not at all. She's had worse, some even _before_ she came to the ground. It's the shock, mostly, the sudden stab and the first blush of pain as her skin splits and she yells out, yanking her foot from the ground and hopping the last few steps to the dirt and grass.

It's the yell that really does it, that pisses her off and hurts more than the thing on her foot that she refuses to call a wound. She's _better_ than that. Stronger and tougher. But being on the ground, has taught her that stronger and tougher and braver and wiser at all relative concepts here.

On the Ark it was easy, it was clear. Strong and tough were easily and obviously defined there. If you were alive, you were both.

If you weren't…

Clarke pulls her foot towards her and tries not to think of the Ark. She tries not to think of how the things she hated, the black and whites of rights and wrongs, the things that got too many people floated - and not just her father but yeah, him too - are the same things she misses now.

The ground is different. Down here there are gradations of everything, of right and wrong and pain and sorrow and loss. The Ark had rules and society and politics and some of it, she swore, was nothing more than the same shit that got them all killed almost a hundred years ago just gussied up as necessary evils if they wanted to survive.

There is nothing gussied up on the ground, there was no making the bad seem better. They'd had necessary evils on the Ark, but the ground _is_ necessary evils. And every day you spend _above_ ground you give into them a little.

Or soon, you find that you're not above ground anymore.

The ground is like the stream bed. It brought them big rocks, smooth and shiny. It brought them space and freedom and more air than they will ever need. And it brought them the little ones. The tiny jagged points hiding beneath it all. The moments and decisions that turned them into an entire population of Jahas, of 'no good guys', of making one _bad_ choice after another because they're all a step up from the _worse_ choice.

Until the worse choice is all you have left.

Clarke winces as she looks to her to her foot, bending her knee and twisting so she can see the sole. She almost misses it at first, her so-called wound, it's _that_ tiny and _that_ insignificant. It's only when she twists just right, when the skin on the bottom of her foot fold and wrinkles in exactly the right spot, that she sees it, that it just… appears.

It was always there, she knows that. It was there even when she didn't - or _couldn't_ \- see it and she's sure of that because she felt it cut and there's a tiny fragment of rock left behind, wedged in the folds of her skin, as if the Earth knew she'd need the evidence. But it's like so much else down here. Hidden. Buried. It's there if you know where to look but you almost _never_ do and so you never see it coming, even when you know you should have, when it was right there the whole fucking time.

And _that's_ the ground, too. Reminding you of things you're trying to forget through any and all means. Even a tiny little rock and a not-really-wound.

Clarke leans back against a tree, clutching her foot and trying to forget, _again_. She thinks of her mother and her father and birthdays when she was little and she and Wells were friends. She thinks of kissing Finn - the _only_ kisses she lets herself think of because all her kisses on the ground have hurt, in the end, but at least _his_ betrayal was _for_ her. She thinks of those first days, of watching Octavia and Jasper and Monty revel in the new world and of the unmitigated and unpolluted joy of seeing her mother, alive, again.

And she thinks of the mountain. Of the art and the music and the laughter. Of the white walls without so much as a flake of dirt or mud and all the things _they_ clung to, the things they held to from who they'd been before the bombs. All that things that had reminded her, for a moment or two (or more, when she'd _let_ it) that it - _life_ \- wasn't _just_ about what you could endure on the way to death, not even on the ground.

She thinks of all that and tries not to think of the monsters that perverted it and ruined it and made all the clean and beautiful into something _worse_ than the bombs.

Or the monster who killed them all.

And that's the _one_ thing Clarke misses most from the Ark, from before her father died and everything changed. She misses a time when she wasn't so fucking maudlin, so dramatic, and so 'I bear it so they don't have to' because _that_ is just so much _bullshit_.

She _bears_ it because she _did_ it and everything else is some kind of Christ complex she doesn't have the time, energy, or need to deal with anymore.

Living is too much fucking work as it is.

So _that's_ what she gets back to. Living. Twisting and turning and checking her foot from every angle, the doctor in her blood kicking in. It's a clean cut. Straight and true and not very deep and with some care, just a little, it won't amount to anything and she'll like forget it's even there within a day. _That_ , she knows, is a luxury the ground doesn't usually afford.

Standing and dressing and even walking aren't issues until she steps _just_ right - forgetting it's there already - and the pain shoots through her sole and into her heel. She doesn't cry out this time, but she does slump against the tree, lifting her foot off the ground until the pain passes, which it does quickly - another rarity - and she's able to drop her foot.

She takes one experimental step without difficulty. And then another. And then another and another and another and then there's that stab again, unexpected and quick, less _stab_ and more _cut_ , like paper slicing against her skin. She winces but it's nothing really, just a little pain and soon she'll be used to it, soon she won't even feel it, soon it won't slow her down and it will be just a little something she has to endure.

Endurance.

One more necessary evil.

Clarke learned that one long before the ground.

* * *

If the first is an accident - or the Earth, the _ground_ , toying with her and take your pick on that, _really_ \- then the second and third are experiments. Tests. She's a scientist of a sort, after all.

Can't be sure of anything without tests.

Clarke walks on the first cut for four or five hours and, for most of that time she doesn't even feel it. She has to step in just the right way, twist her foot at exactly the right angle and _then_ she notices it, then she feels that quick, sharp sting riding along the sole of her foot, back to her heel and up to her toes. The first three times she does it are accidents, missteps caused by uneven ground or branches or rocks or her not paying attention because she's _thinking_ again.

 _Not everyone, not you_

 _If you need forgiveness, I'll give that to you_

 _What did you do?_

The first three times are accidents but the fourth, she does on purpose. The same with the fifth and sixth, the ones right before nightfall as she's prepping her camp. She tries to tell herself she does it to feel something, something more than the sun and the rain and the dirt and the empty feeling gnawing at her stomach from lack of food and just _lack_.

She never was a very good liar.

Those last couple, they're the ones that linger and stay with her. They're the ones she can still feel as she tries to fall asleep listening to the noises she doesn't recognize in the night.

On the Ark, she knew all the noises by heart. Air compressors and hydraulic pumps and the faint rushing thrum thrum of the thrusters that kept them in orbit.

"You can't _really_ hear them," her father told her. "None of us can. They don't make any sound in space and we're too far removed from them, there's too many decks and too much metal in the way for us to hear them in here."

Clarke nodded and watched him, the way she always had, like he was the sun and it hurt her eyes to look but she just couldn't stop. He ran his hand along the nearest wall, tracing the outline of a thin dent in the bulkhead that had been there as long as she could remember.

"I hear them too," he whispered and then her mother was there ushering him off to talk about something supposedly too grown up for Clarke's ears.

She was sixteen and soon he'd be dead and she'd be headed for the ground and she still hears thrusters at night even over the sounds of the woods.

That night she dreams of Finn which doesn't surprise her. The dead walk through her dreams every night, the ones she'd shared goodbyes with _and_ the ones she didn't. She dreams of Ark Finn, who she never _knew_ and his spacewalk that he never too. In her dream, he peels off the suit and the alarms sound and the he's hustling Raven through corridor after corridor with security always just one hallway back.

Raven _runs_ and Clarke watches her legs as the move. So fluid, so smooth, so quick. She runs and Finn hisses directions at her through clenched teeth as they navigate the Ark. Right here. Left up ahead. Another right and another. Left at the end of the hall.

Clarke knows where they're going even before they end up at her door and she's waiting to usher them in. When security arrives they're sitting there - the three of _them_ \- around her tiny table, chatting like the oldest friends in the universe and she alibis them both. Finn smiles gratefully and Raven stares at her across the table, her eyes flicking back and forth between Clarke and her _boyfriend_ and Clarke has to move, has to leave, has to get away.

She winces as her foot hits the floor.

"You OK?" Finn asks and Clarke doesn't know what to say because it's a dream and she can't warn him not to go to the ground or not to search for her or to always be in love with Raven because then he won't die and her foot hurts and Raven's staring and security's coming back because there's no one else it _could have been_.

And she wakes. In the woods, on the ground and she doesn't sleep again that night.

When light finally comes, Clarke takes her knife from her belt and pulls off her boot. It's just an experiment, she reasons. It's just a test. She slices slowly, carefully, two cuts, on on either side of the one the rock gave her.

One for each.

It's that simple, really. One for each of them, one for each of them that she wronged, no matter what bullshit her subconscious gave her about saving them and their fates being out of her hands.

Clarke knows better.

She didn't save _anyone_.

She stares at her foot, at the three tiny red slivers of broken skin all lined up in a row.

One for each.

It is, she thinks, a start.


	2. Elena

Her name is Elena and by the time Clarke kills her, she's the least of the former Arker's problems.

Clarke's been wandering for weeks (three, she _thinks_ , though she stopped counting days after four) and everything looks the same. Somewhere, deep down, she _knows_ why but she's not quite ready to _say_ it just yet, or to even _think_ it, and so she doesn't. Instead, she focuses on moving, on walking, on the ground before her - and not the ground _behind_ her - and on thinking of it as anything _but_ that.

Anything but _the_ ground.

She thinks of it that way - she _makes_ herself think of it that way - in small letters, in no proper nouns, as just earth and not _The Earth_ , as dirt, as trees, as water and grass and rocks she's careful ( _now_ ) not to step on. It's a _thing_ , not a _place_ , a rock floating in space and not her _home_ , whatever the hell that means.

The Ark was a home. The Dropship and the tiny little camp they built around it was a home and Camp Jaha was a home. And she left them all. Or maybe they all left her and maybe _that's_ getting a little too philosophical so she focuses, again, on the ground.

The ground - this ground or that ground or _the_ ground - is not a home. It's just a thing and she's just wandering it and that's what Clarke focuses on, that's what takes up most of her mind as she walks and as she sits and as she - often barely - sleeps.

That. And the cuts.

By the time Elena finds her (though Clarke knows she's there well before that), dragging a bound and gagged Monty into the clearing and shoving him to his knees, Clarke is on cut number twenty-eight. The first, the one from the jagged little hiding fuck of a rock is nearly gone. It's healed, as well as anything heals out here, and though she can still see the mark, Clarke doesn't _feel_ it anymore.

And she wishes - when she lets herself think about that sort of thing - that it was that simple for everything. Just give it an hour or a day or a couple weeks wandering the fucking woods. And then the feels just… disappear.

She thought, briefly, of opening that first one up again. A quick slip of the knife against the skin and she knew it would split wide. But every time she touches the blade to that spot, her stomach rolls and her heart races and she figures that maybe, just maybe, some wounds _should_ heal.

Especially when there's always room for a new one. And one thing _the_ ground has taught her, without a doubt, is that there's _always_ room for new one.

The soles of her feet are a crosshatched mess of fresh and healing wounds, some new and bloody some dry and scabbed, some - _most_ \- somewhere in between. Clarke can't ever open one again (though if the ground does it for her, she doesn't complain) and soon enough there was no room left on her feet, no spots of bare flesh big enough or usable enough.

The walking - the hiking and climbing and dragging herself through places people were probably never meant to go - has left her heels sore and calloused and too thick to cut, like old dry meat, the kind of thing that might serve a purpose - might give you what you _need_ , might keep you fed - but it lacks that… flavor. Flavor here is pain and pain is reminders and without that there's no fucking point so Clarke abandons her feet after number twenty.

It takes her less than an hour to move to her knees. She stays away from her calves and her ankles, too worried she might slip, too afraid she might give in to the worst parts of her (the ones that come out at night, alone in the dark with nothing but the sounds she doesn't know and that's why she _only_ cuts during the day) and work the blade too far in, finding muscle or tendon and ignoring the pain and the screams she's sure would follow.

An injury like that would leave her stuck, immobile, and though she knows (whether she admits it or not) that she's not going _anywhere_ (at least not anywhere she hasn't already been), moving is the only thing keeping her together, it's the only thing giving her hope that she might, maybe, possibly, _just might_ , find a way back.

Back to what, she's not sure, but that's not a worry for now.

The cuts along her knee hurt more than her foot, at least in the giving. They're less painful _after_ , not being pressed on and pushed on and driven against the ground with every step. It's only a 'just right' movement, a specific twist or a 'right' turn that rubs the fabric of her pants against them and _then_ they burn. It only takes Clarke a day or two to figure out just where to scratch them out, just what spots are the ones she's most likely to feel. It's not the same as her feet, not as sharp and as sudden and it doesn't rush through her, traveling from front to back like those do.

Those are just _right there_ and once she gets the hang of it - like shooting a gun or tracking prey for food or making a mockery of medical science and paralyzing a friend - it quickly becomes old hat and she spends days walking with a near constant rush of reminders from feet to knees and, eventually, to that soft and tender spot right beneath her ribs and Clarke knows that soon she'll have to start on her arms and maybe then her hands.

It's good, she thinks, to have a plan.

It's something to think about, after all.

* * *

If it weren't for Monty, Clarke might have let Elena live.

Or, maybe, she would've let Elena _kill her_. She doubts it, mostly. She's had her chances, out here on her 'walkabout', the moments when she could've ended it. But she didn't and not even in the night when she can't sleep and she stares so long into the dark that she swears her eyes are closed even when they're not.

So, no, she probably wouldn't have let Elena kill her.

Probably.

And she tries _really_ hard to not think about when the hell it became _probably_.

Elena finds her on what Clarke guesses is the fourth day of her third week of walking and Clarke knows that 'finds' isn't _exactly_ the right word. 'Find' implies something new, that Elena was just out there and she stumbled upon Clarke, like Raven 'found' the way to burn three hundred Grounders alive under the Dropship or Bellamy 'found' the Grounder army of prisoners inside the mountain. Like it's an accident, a twist of fate, a bit of luck.

Luck and fate and accidents of both suggest that the grounder hadn't been following her for the better part of a week, that she hasn't been laying in wait, searching for just the right moment.

The moment arrives with Monty and Clarke really isn't surprised.

She's not surprised that it's _him_ \- because of course it's him, it would _have_ to be him, him or Bellamy and Bellamy wouldn't fuck up and get _caught_ , so of course it's Monty - and she's not surprised it's _there_ , not with the shadow of that fucking mountain hanging over them. Clarke's not stupid (or egotistical) enough to think Monty is there for her, that he's come looking for her, hoping he can bring her back.

Monty's there for the same reason she is.

It's the only place either of them belongs anymore.

* * *

Elena finds Monty the same day she 'finds' Clarke and _that_ part is fate or luck or an accident of timing and if not for that little twist, things might have gone differently.

Monty might be out there still, wandering (but not _aimlessly_ ), slowly making his way to the mountain. Clarke might be on her way to Polis or to the Ice Kingdom or to the bottom of a shallow grave in some deep part of the woods.

Or to the mountain.

Elena might be on her way home, mission accomplished on on _her_ way to the Ice Kingdom or to the bottom of shallow grave, which is a dignity Clarke considers giving her but then decides against it because there's no time and because _fuck her_.

But there _was_ that accident, there _was_ that twist, there was that intervention of fate (and Clarke hates that fucking concept but she's starting to believe, no matter how badly she doesn't want to) and things _didn't_ go differently. She's bleeding and Monty's shaking and Elena's dead and there will be more of them coming. Another Elena, another Indra or Tristan or…

Another _Heda._

Which, if Elena is to be believed, is a _real_ possibility and Clarke isn't sure what to think about that. Or if she even _should_.

No. _That_ she's sure of. She shouldn't. She _really_ shouldn't.

Elena finds Monty just outside the border of what would have been the Mountain - Grounder truce if Clarke hadn't ended that by ending _them_. He's walking slow, mostly because he knows where he's going and knowing you _have_ to go somewhere doesn't always equate to getting there in any kind of hurry.

Or wanting to.

She finds him there and she catches him - tying and binding and gagging him - _before_ he has a chance to fight, which might be the only thing that keeps him alive. Clarke doesn't think Monty _wants_ to die anymore than she does, but she knows he's slightly more ill equipped physically to fight the end off it comes for him.

Monty is many things, many good and _excellent_ and utterly _human_ things. He's loyal and caring and he might be the smartest person Clarke's ever met. She knows they'd have lost it all, or at least more of it than they did, without him. He sent the signal, he helped Jasper keep the forty-eight from falling apart. He helped her…

Monty's a fucking hero.

He's _also_ a murderer or at least an accomplice to it even if not a single one (or _almost_ not a single one) of the people they pulled out of that fucking mountain thinks so.

They might not. But _he_ does and Clarke knows he does.

Because he's there.

Elena finds him and captures him and strolls into the clearing in front of Clarke like she owns the fucking place, shoving Monty to his knees between them even as Clarke pulls her knife and leaps to her feet.

"My name is Elena," she says. "And I'm here to take you to safety."

Clarke's eyes flick between Elena and Monty and the knife in the girl's hand. And she really is no more than a girl, younger than her or Octavia or Lexa and in a different life she'd be trying to decide which boy she likes and what dress she should wear to the ball and this is _so_ not a different life, so instead of pigtails and dresses she's got a knife and a prisoner and habit of lying.

Because no fucking way she's there for Clarke's safety.

"The Commander sent me," Elena says. "She wishes me to bring you to the Capital."

The Commander. The Commander wishes.

Clarke wishes the Commander…

No. Just… _no_.

"It is not safe for you here, Clarke of the Sky People," Elena says, taking one step forward. Her foot hasn't even settled in the soft ground before Clarke's knife is up. "If you don't want to die, you need to come with me," Elena says, not taking the step back. "We can protect you."

Clarke moves to her left, keeping Monty between her and Elena. "Protect me from who?" she asks. "I've been out here for weeks and _you're_ the only person I've seen."

Elena slides to her own left, mirroring Clarke's moves. "Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they're not there," she says and it's the first thing ( _second_ ) she's said that Clarke believes.

"Who?" Clarke asks again. "Who does Lexa think is after me?"

There's a twitch, almost imperceptible, that flickers across Elena's cheek at Clarke's use of the Commander's name.

"You've developed a… reputation," Elena says. "You killed the Mountain Men," she says as if that explains it all and maybe it does.

Clarke's eyes shift - for the briefest of seconds - to Monty but he doesn't flinch or shift or even seem to have heard her. "That was the plan," she says. "Mine and Lexa's. To kill them and save _our_ people. Her _and_ mine."

Elena nods. "Yes," she says. "But _you_ did it." She takes a step forward, ignoring Clarke's knife, and moves next to Monty. "You and this one and your… what did the Commander call him… your _inside man_."

"You know an awful lot about something you _weren't there for_ ," Clarke says and she has to remind herself she's talking to a lackey, an underling, a soldier and not _Heda_ herself. "And so what? So I followed through on the plan and did what I had to do. Lexa should understand that."

Clarke's pretty sure, almost _positive_ that Lexa _does_. Which makes one of them at least.

She watches as Elena steps slowly around Monty, half circling him from behind, her own knife dancing through the air, weaving in and out in a slow circle and it's almost hypnotic. "The Commander understands very well," Elena says. "It's the other Clans who are somewhat…" she pauses for a moment, considering her words carefully. "You've become a legend, Clarke of the Sky People."

Elena stills behind Monty, her blade resting on his shoulder and stares at Clarke or _through_ her and Clarke is immensely proud that she doesn't so much as flinch, save for the hand slowly slipping toward the gun tucked against her hip. "I'm not a legend," she says. "I'm not a leader or a hero or… I'm not even part of my own 'clan' anymore."

"That is where you are wrong," Elena says and Clarke watches as the blade of the young Grounder's knife slides across Monty's skin, the flat of it gliding across his neck. "You _are_ a legend," she says. "The slayer. The one who brought down the mountain."

She twists the knife in her hand and the blade shifts, resting against Monty's cheek and he doesn't flinch any more than Clarke did and _that_ doesn't impress Clarke. He _should_. He should flinch and scream and fight against his ties and that gag and be fucking terrified.

But he's not and that's on her and that's on the ground - _the_ ground - and Clarke feels it all, from her feet to her knees to the soft spot just under her ribs.

"You, Clarke of the Sky People," Elena says. "You have changed _everything_."

And _that_ Clarke can believe.

* * *

You, Elena tells her, have become death.

And death is not something you want to be on _the_ ground, not if you want to live.

She explains it to Clarke (and Monty) as simply as she can, all while keeping the boy (Clarke knows he's a _man_ but seeing him there reminds her all too much of how young he really is, how young they all are) between her and Clarke and never once letting her blade trail too far from his neck.

The Clans, she says, have spoken. Clarke is a threat. It doesn't matter that she's left, it doesn't matter that she's run from her people, it doesn't matter than she's trying as hard as she can to disappear.

She's still _there_. She's still somewhere on the ground and death, as it turns out, is not something the Grounders want wandering their world.

"You killed three hundred of us at your ship," Elena reminds her. " _Your_ boy killed unarmed men and women and children in just minutes. You brought the missile to Tondc and you killed the mountain men."

Where Clarke goes death follows and maybe the Grounder Clans have a point.

The Clans want her eliminated Elena explains, though Lexa doesn't think that's _all_ they want.

"Some would make you _theirs_ ," she says. "They understand what the Commander's actions at the mountain meant. They know what she did to you."

No, Clarke thinks, they really don't.

* * *

She almost believes Elena and maybe that's because she wants to.

Clarke knows who she is and she knows what she's done (the simple facts of it are hard to ignore and if she needs a reminder, there's quite a few of them rotting at the top of the mountain) and if she doesn't understand it all, if she doesn't quite get why _she_ had to be the one, well maybe _this_ is why.

Maybe it's a higher purpose. Maybe it's to be a symbol or a figurehead or something to rally behind. Even if the ones doing the rallying are doing it just to see her dead.

At least it's something. Something she can believe. Almost.

But almost isn't enough.

"You're not here to bring me to safety," Clarke says. She's still keeping a distance, playing it safe, just like Elena keeping Monty between them and her blade at his throat. "Lexa wouldn't send you here for that."

"You presume to know what the Commander would do?" Elena asks.

"No," Clarke says. She did that once. Didn't work out. "But saving me would be… weakness."

It's not the word she _means_ but it's the one she _says_.

"Your _Commander_?" Clarke says, keeping her stance, showing Elena her profile. It gives her less of a target for the knife and hides the gun from view. "She abandoned me and my people to save hers. And now you want me to think she'd risk them all, risk war with the other Clans just to keep me safe?"

Elena says nothing and Clarke's not surprised. She wasn't sent here for subterfuge or deception. She was sent here for that knife and what she can do with it and Clarke's sure there's five or six or a dozen more Elena's in the woods around the mountain.

"She knew I'd be _here_ , didn't she?" Clarke asks, though even Elena knows it's rhetorical. "She knew that no matter where I _intended_ to go, I'd always end up here. Scene of the crime, if you will."

"What you did was no crime," Elena says, the words tumbling from her mouth in a rush, losing the well practiced tone of everything else she's said. "The mountain men _deserved -"_

"The _men_ , maybe," Clarke says. "The others…" She shakes her head. Now that she understands what's going on she knows she's working on borrowed time. "Lexa knew I'd be here so she sent you - and however many others are out there - to do what? Find me? Capture me? _Kill_ me?"

Clarke didn't flinch. Monty didn't flinch.

Elena did.

* * *

The plan is simple and perfectly Lexa and Clarke kind of admires that.

She'd admire it more if it didn't involve her death, but still…

Lexa is on the ropes, her role as Commander in danger. The alliance with the Sky People had been one thing. _That_ had been bad enough, a sin almost unforgivable. But to have betrayed an ally and to have done it _for_ the Mountain Men….

The leaders of the other clans would have done the same, they would have sold the Sky People out in a heartbeat if it meant saving their own people. But that hasn't stopped a one of them from using it against Lexa, that hasn't stopped any of them from calling her duplicitous and deceptive and weak.

She turned on Clarke, made an enemy of death. For what? A truce the mountain would've broken at the first opportunity? To save a village's worth of her people who were already broken and wounded and - in some cases - will never really be alive again?

Lexa is hanging by a thread and she needs more. More threads, more knots, more chances to make them into ropes and tie herself to victory and success.

She can't be _Lexa_ , not when it comes to Clarke. She needs to be the Commander. She needs to be _Heda_.

And if that means killing Clarke, if that means demonstrating that she has no weakness and will not allow a danger to roam free? So be it. And if takes Elena and every other one of her soldiers she sent - and she suspects it will, Elena says, because Clarke has a way of surviving - so be that too.

It might have taken more than just Elena. It might have taken the others, out there in the woods, circling the mountain and slowly hemming her in. But Elena found her _and_ Elena found Monty.

"You will drop your knife," Elena says. "You will drop your knife and you will take to your knees and you will _not_ fight," she says. "Or before I kill _you_ , I will make you watch me kill _him_."

The blade - her blade - is on Monty's neck, the tip drawing just a drop of blood and Clarke knows she has no choice.

She pulls the gun before Elena even knows she has it and the first shot goes wide but the second catches her in the throat and she staggers back before the third hits her in the chest, knocking her against a tree.

Elena dies on her feet which, Clarke knows, is about the best most of them can hope for.

She cuts through Monty's bindings with her knife and helps him untie the gag. He looks at he and then to Elena and then back to her and Clarke sees it in his eyes. He's grateful to be alive but someone else had to…

"There'll be time enough for the guilt later," Clarke says. "There's more out there. If we want to live, we need to move."

Monty nods and they start to walk but he pauses and doubles back, pulling Elena's knife from her hand before they go.

Before they start the long walk up the mountain.


	3. Doesn't Hurt

It doesn't take Monty long to ask, they've made it less than a quarter of the way up the mountain, and Clarke isn't really surprised. His question is _her_ question after all, the one that's burning her mind with every step, enough of a distraction that she's barely even noticing the cuts.

"Do you think she was telling the truth?" he asks. "The Grounder?"

He doesn't use her name (Elena) and _that_ doesn't surprise Clarke much either. She gets it. It's easier that way. No name. Just 'the Grounder' . Another faceless cog in a very large machine, one that keeps _trying_ to chew them up but only ever manages to choke on them and spit them back out, never quite finished but always just a bit more used and a touch more broken than when it started.

She stops in front of a particularly large clump of roots in their path and keeps reminding herself that the mountain is nothing but more ground, that it's _nothing_ more than that. It's more ground that's not _the_ ground, though she has to admit there's more _the_ to the mountain than even she can completely ignore, but it's still just ground, only rougher and harder. There's logs and branches and roots and rocks and though she knows they weren't arranged by human hands, that doesn't change that it _feels_ like they were, like they were laid there as barricades and blocks and natural fences and gates and all they had to do was obey and everything would've been OK.

And that's just so much revisionist history bullshit she can't even stand it.

"The truth?" she asks. "About what?"

Like she doesn't know _exactly_ what. The 'what' that's been hanging over them since Elena appeared and only got about a hundred times bigger when she said _it_ and probably a thousand times bigger than that after Clarke put a bullet in her throat.

"About Lexa," Monty says and this time Clarke _is_ surprised, shocked that he used her name, thrown off by the air of familiarity in his tone, the way he says it like he's got any idea who she is, like he knows anything about her more than what he heard in stories from Bellamy and Kane and the others. "Do you think she really wants you dead? Do you think the Grounder was on the level or..."

Clarke stares up ahead, judging the distance from where they are to where they have to be and studying all the places in between. All the places where the other Elenas, the other Grounders are skulking and lurking and slowly closing in on them. All the places where her enemy that was once a friend hides and waits, eager to do Heda's bidding, _whatever_ that might be.

"Or," she says softly, stepping carefully over the roots, making sure not to touch them, lest she find herself as bound to the ground as they are.

"Or _what_?" Monty calls after her, but Clarke doesn't answer or even so much as shrug and this time it's _Monty_ that gets it. If there's one lesson they've both learned from the mountain and the ground?

There's always an or.

* * *

It doesn't take Monty much longer to ask her _other_ question and if he keeps _that_ up, if he keeps saying what she's thinking before she even knows she's thinking it, Clarke's going to have to consider leaving him behind.

She doesn't need anyone _else_ in her head.

"You think they'll really stay out?" he asks. "If they're even really out there?"

Clarke has little doubt that they're out there. She doesn't know how much of what Elena said was true - and she's doing her level best to not wonder about it because that leads nowhere she wants to go - but she's sure the Grounders are here.

It's the _why_ , she's not too sure of.

She considers Monty's question, pausing just long enough to shrug and then she's moving again, ducking branches and stepping over roots and moving as quickly as the terrain will allow, headed for the top and the station and the one chance they might have out here.

Will they stay out? Will the Grounders really stay on this side of the door and refuse to enter Mount Weather?

It's a thought. A theory. She thinks it might hold true. The Grounders are superstitious and religious and mystical by nature. The thought of what happened up there, of what the Mountain Men did, of the spirits and souls that were trapped and then slowly drained, drop by drop, the taking of life that was used to give life and justified by supposedly civilized men who were true fucking savages?

Yeah. It might keep them out. It might be enough to buy her and Monty some time, at the least.

But time, Clarke knows, runs out eventually. It might take a day or a week or ninety-seven years but eventually it always runs out.

Sometimes even _without_ a helping hand on the lever.

* * *

It takes them forty-five minutes to reach the mid-point and Clarke's turn to ask the question.

Every step brings another wave of pain, another shooting star of burn and it's not _just_ the cuts, it's the weeks of walking and it's the ground and the roots and the rocks and it's the sight of Elena slumped against the tree and it's the feel of the gun in her hand and she thought she'd be over that after Dante. It's all of it and it's the preoccupations of her mind, the way it keeps running through scenarios and possibilities and she can't focus on the mundane things like where her feet are and where she's going and after the third time she trips and stumbles and has to catch herself with her hands, Monty grabs her arm.

"We can stop," he says. "Just for a minute."

She glares at him but he doesn't back down, not even a step - he's seen _worse_ \- and she's grateful that he says it and even more grateful he doesn't make up some kind of excuse, some bullshit about him needing the break. She doesn't need to be placated and that's not Monty's game anyway. He's honest even when it sucks, even when you don't want to hear it and that's how Clarke _knows_ he's lying when she asks.

"How's Jasper?"

"He's fine," Monty answers quickly, _too_ quickly, too practiced, like he's been saying it over and over and over again and Clarke suspects he has. "Well… maybe not… _fine_. Better, maybe. A little. He's speaking again. Not to me, but…"

Clarke wants to tell him that Jasper will get over it. That he'll do what they _all_ do - what they've all done over and over again since they came to _the ground_ \- and find a way to make peace with… and if not peace, then at least a way to live with it.

She wants to tell him that.

"We need to keep moving," she says. "I didn't die on this fucking mountain the first time. No plans to start now."

* * *

It doesn't take them as long as they thought ( _hoped_ ) to reach the top of the mountain and neither of them is remotely ready. The winds have picked up the sky is dark in the distance and there's Grounders out there, somewhere in the trees, just waiting to kill them, but neither of them can do it.

They can't go in.

They just… _can't_.

So they don't. They find trees and lean against them and look everywhere but at the door, at the bunker, at… _it._ Monty's got one eye on the horizon, watching for the literal storm and doing his level best to ignore the metaphorical one they're trapped in anc Clarke's got one eye on the woods, waiting for the inevitable and they're both wondering how they ever thought this was a good idea.

And then they remember.

They didn't.

Neither of them ever once thought this was a _good_ plan. It was, like every other fucking plan they've ever had, just _a plan_. An idea. Something that would get them through the immediate, through the crisis right in front of them and something that would, maybe, give them a fighting chance of getting through the crisis right behind that one and the one behind that and then the next and the next and the next.

That's every plan down here, every plan on _the_ ground. They're not so much plans as they are stopgaps, a never ending cycle of tape and glue and sweat and blood and holding everything together until there's nothing left to hold and then finding the next thing. They're not plans, they're Dropships, they're running, they're hiding, they're burning and alliances and Camp Jahas and sacrifices and saviors.

There's no planning on _the_ ground and Clarke and Monty know that better than most. There's only doing what you _have_ to and then hoping you get a chance to fix it later and that the fix won't make everything else worse.

Clarke follows Monty's lead and slides to the ground, her back pressed against the biggest tree she can find and she even lets her eyes close, just for a moment. She doesn't sleep, she can't even remember the last time she really did _that_ , but it's a moment or two of peace, of being able to pretend that there's not an opportunistic Grounder ready to pounce, that she hasn't left everyone and everything behind, that she's not sitting outside the last place on Earth she wants to be that just happens to be her best chance to live.

Closing her eyes is a risk and she knows it. But this is _the_ ground. Down here breathing is a fucking risk and she's tired and she's _there_ and if fate's going to kill her because she shuts her eyes for thirty seconds then _fuck_ fate. But then she hears a noise, a sound that breaks through the relative silence of the wind and the trees - a low grunt that _might_ be that opportunistic Grounder charging but _is_ Monty trying to work out a kink in his neck - and Clarke's eyes pop open, one hand going for her knife, the other for the gun and she sees it - a whole lot of _nothing_ \- and it's almost enough to make her laugh.

She doesn't _want_ to die, which is lucky for her because it seems her mind and her instincts and fucking fate just won't let her.

Monty's watching her from across the way and even when she had _her_ eyes closed, she could feel _his_ on her, could feel them on the cuts, the ones on her arms that she bared halfway up the mountain, the sweat rolling across her skin sliding across them, bringing with it a new burn and a new sting. Clarke saw the look on Monty's face when he saw them and there was something there, something she hadn't quite known what to do with.

She'd expected revulsion or confusion or even anger. If it had been Bellamy and not Monty, it would have been different (and not just in that Bellamy would never have gotten caught.) He would have called her on it, he would have demanded an explanation and then, no matter what it was, he would have told her it was all so much bullshit.

 _If you need forgiveness, I'll give that to you._

There was none of that with Monty. There was a moment, a flicker of something close to shock on his face but it was gone almost before Clarke even saw it. And then there was… _something_.

 _Understanding_.

It couldn't have been that though and not because Monty _couldn't_ understand but Clarke couldn't _take_ it if he did. Monty had been through hell, they all had, and she knew enough of what had happened in the mountain to know he'd had it as bad as any of them. But she just couldn't accept him… _understanding_ … not that.

She could barely understand. And she was the one doing it.

"Kill marks," Monty says and Clarke startles at the sound, staring at him in confusion. "Octavia had some," he says in answer to the question she didn't ask. "She said it was a Grounder thing, but hers were on her shoulder."

The wind blows harder and Clarke winces at the feel of it across the most recent cuts along her arm. "They're not…" She shakes her head, not sure at all how to tell him what they _aren't_ because that would mean telling him what they _are_ and she just doesn't know. "They're not kill marks," she says. "I'm not Octavia."

Monty nods as if _that_ makes all the sense in the world. "I'm not sure _Octavia_ is Octavia anymore," he says. "She's more Grounder than…" He shrugs. "Than whatever the hell _we_ are now."

Another gust of wind rolls through, rattling the trees. "We need to get inside," Clarke says. "That storm will be here soon and if there are Grounders out there…"

If.

 _If_.

Clarke's so fucking sick of if.

She stares down at her arm, at the marks there, the cuts healed and healing and raw and new and _that's_ what they are. A bunch of if. If they hadn't come here, if she hadn't burned 300 Grounders, if she hadn't left Finn and Bellamy to die, if she hadn't killed Finn, even out of mercy.

If and if and if and if they don't get inside then the storm or the Grounders will come for them and if they survive that, it'll just be another mark, another cut and there's not room enough on her shoulders or her back of her _body_. It's not big enough and neither is her mind or her heart and her soul… if she's even still got _that_ … is so far past the point of being _marked_ …

Clarke stands and move across the clearing, the knife still in her hand and she wants to cut, she wants to add to the trail on her arm - one for Elena but they're _not_ kill marks, no - but she can't, not with Monty there, not with his eyes on her.

His understanding eyes.

She heads for the woods, mumbling something about checking out a noise or some other such bullshit but Monty stops her, reaching out and catching her arm as she passes. Clarke looks down at him (at, not _on_ , never that) and watches in shock as he reaches up and takes the knife from her hand.

He stares at it for a long moment, turning the blade over in his hand before gripping the hilt tightly. "Where?" he asks and Clarke shakes her head at him in confusion. "Where's good?" he asks, "where won't…" He trails off and ducks his head as she understands.

Where won't it hurt as much.

She panics and goes to take the knife but she's too late as he mutters a 'fuck it' and then draws the blade across the his palm, a short horizontal cut right at the base, across the bottom of his life line and he winces, hissing through clenched teeth as the blood bubbles up between the skin and brings the pain with it.

But that's _it._ He doesn't cry out, he doesn't curse and there's no tears in his eyes and he wipes knife across the leg of his pants, both sides twice - always thorough - and hands it back to Clarke. "No point," he says. "There was no point if it didn't hurt, right?"

It's all she can do to nod and _that_ terrifies her more than anything, more than the sight of Dante dying at her hand, more than the memory of watching Lexa and her army - their last fucking chance - walk away, more than the sight of her mother on that table in the mountain or the nothing she felt when she killed Elena or the way her stomach clenches tighter with every step they take toward the door.

There's no point. No point if it doesn't hut.

That's what they've become.

And Clarke doesn't know what the _fuck_ to do with that.

* * *

"You didn't have to."

It's been five or maybe ten or maybe forty minutes since Monty's first cut (and Clarke tries so hard to not think of how easily she thinks of it as the _first_ ) and despite the storm coming closer and the wind picking up, neither of them has moved.

She can't speak for Monty, but Clarke would almost _welcome_ another Grounder. Another enemy, another target, another excuse to stay right where they are or maybe, finally, a reason to go in.

"You didn't have to," she says again. "The cut, I mean. You didn't… you haven't…"

You haven't killed. They're not kill marks but you didn't have to make one cause you haven't killed and that makes about as much sense as anything else _down here_.

"There was a guard," Monty says softly. "In there," he nods at the bunker and Clarke knows where this story's going. "They came to take us, to force us into being donors and Jasper… he had this plan." He shakes his head at the notion of Jasper with a plan or maybe at the idea that anyone (other than _him_ ) would actually follow it.

Crazy leaders and crazy plans and _the_ ground makes both of them seem so fucking logical.

"It worked," Monty says and there's only a little surprise in his voice. "It bought us and you and Bellamy time and it probably saved our lives.' He squeezes his hand into a fist, the motion pushing another tiny rivulet of blood to the surface. "I killed one of them," he says. "One of the guards."

"He would have -"

"I know," Monty says, cutting her off. "I know it was him or me or us. I don't regret it, it had to be done, it was all part of the plan. But you said I hadn't and I have but… but _this,"_ he holds up his hand. "This isn't for him."

Clarke waits, giving him time and watching as he tips his head back against the tree and lets out a long shuddering breath.

"Her name was Mrs. Ryan and she hid us," he says. "Twelve of us. She protected us from Cage and his father and they came for her…"

Clarke knew, from what Bellamy had said, that some of the residents of Mount Weather had helped them, had shuffled them around, keeping them one step ahead of Cage and Emerson and off those fucking tables and away from the needles.

She knew Maya. And now she had another name, another name to go with a body but at least it wasn't one on Level Five and _fuck_ … when did little details like that become _good_ things?

"I couldn't have stopped them," Monty says and Clarke doesn't chime in, doesn't agree with him because he already knows he's right and that's _so_ not the fucking point. "She died to protect us," he says. "And I _let_ her. I let her die so I could warn the others that Cage knew about the Grounder army. I made sure _her_ sacrifice wasn't in vain, that she died for something more than twelve delinquents hiding away in her home."

Sometimes, Clarke knows, that's all you can do. And someday, she hopes, that won't be true.

Monty looks at his hand, at the thin trail of blood dripping down to his wrist. "And then Lexa left. She took that army from inside and she took her soldiers and she walked away and left us there to die." He holds up his hand again. "This isn't for that guard or for Mrs. Ryan who, as it turns out, did die for nothing. Nothing but giving me a chance to find a way to kill everyone she ever knew, everyone she ever loved. If Cage and his men had never known she helped us, if they'd never found out about her, she'd still be just as dead and you know why?"

"Monty…"

She wants him to stop. But he can't and she knows it and maybe later that'll be just one more reason for one more cut.

Not _maybe_.

"She'd be just as dead because Lexa… the mighty _Commander_ … made the hard choice," Monty says. "She picked her people over our and left us there to die so that her people could live, whether it was for a day or a week or a month. And I want to hate her for that Clarke, I want to find her and I want to kill her."

Clarke gets that. She really does.

Monty stands, leaning against the tree with his good hand. "I want to watch her die in front of me because _she's_ why Mrs. Ryan is dead and she's why you're out here and she's why Jasper won't fucking look at me… _can't_ look at me… not without seeing the face of some girl he knew for a fucking _minute_ but loved anyway."

He walks toward the door and Clarke stands behind him.

"This isn't for Mrs. Ryan and it isn't for some nameless fucking guard and it isn't for Maya," Monty says. "And it's not for Lexa because she made the hard choice, because she chose her people over ours. We… you and me and Bellamy… we did the same damn thing. And I want Lexa dead, I want _Heda's_ head on a fucking pile but I _can't_ want that because _I'm_ her and _you're_ her and _Bellamy_ is her."

He squeezes his hand into a fist at his side, staring at the door and the wind chooses that moment to settle and it's so quiet, Clarke can hear him breathe.

"This," Monty says, nodding down at his hand. "This is for _us_. Because we're just as dead as the rest of them. Maybe not today, maybe not in a week or a month or a year. But blood…"

His fist falls open at his side and he walks straight to the door and through it and never once looks back and he never finishes, he never says the words, but Clarke gets it anyway.

Blood must have blood.

And sooner or later, on _the_ ground?

It always does.


End file.
